I seldom introduce myself as Pastor Josh anymore because most people act differently in front of a pastor. Besides, it’s hilarious to watch them panic when they do find out. Now that I’m over my obsession with being a top-tier Christian, I’m sensitive to the perception that pastors are somehow different from or better than anyone else. Even before I worked at Starbucks, I’d remind my church that they don’t have to be in full-time ministry to please God and that they can honor him equally well in their current jobs. I said it so often, I thought I believed it.
But as soon as I started working at Starbucks, I began struggling to find meaning in my job. What’s the spiritual significance of making four-dollar lattes? Did cleaning the lobby really matter in light of eternity? I occasionally got to do things that sounded more spiritual, like having meaningful conversations with fellow partners, but those were the exception. If the value of my work was judged by the number of people I ministered to in traditional ways, I was failing. If it was judged by the number of people I converted to Christianity, I failed completely.
Life became routine. Every Monday through Thursday, I’d head into my Starbucks well before my shift began, dressed in khaki pants and black polo shirt, with my green apron neatly rolled up in my computer bag. I’d sit in the lobby and work on my sermon all morning. In the afternoon, I’d lock my computer in my ’92 Buick LeSabre with its peeling paint, clock in, and start selling coffee.
The best part of my day was after I got home. Every night, I’d slip upstairs to kiss my sleeping daughters goodnight (always a bittersweet moment), spend some time with Marilyn, and go back downstairs to work on this book. I loved my church, but I was pretty discouraged about our financial situation, and writing became my refuge. Whenever my mind wandered, it invariably found its way to a chapter or concept I was working on.
One evening, when I was sweeping the lobby, I finally hit a breaking point. As I swept, I was thinking some really deep thoughts about the Old Testament and how it applies to everyday life. Suddenly, my job at Starbucks felt so meaningless. I’d swept this same floor a hundred times before and would sweep it again the next day. Nearly in tears, I begged God to let me quit this pointless job and go back to my real calling.
It’s not often that I say “the Holy Spirit told me” because I’ve heard that statement followed by some pretty goofy stuff. But in one instant, he showed me my hypocrisy. The same deep thought I had just been thinking now condemned my bad attitude. But it also freed me from a burden I had been carrying for 20 years. I’ll get back to that deep thought shortly, but first let me tell you about the burden.
Called to Go?
I was 15 when I first heard a call to the mission field. Not a call from God, mind you, but from Keith Green. Keith was a Christian musician whose popularity and influence extended well beyond his untimely death in 1982. No Compromise was not only the name of one of his albums, it was his philosophy. Keith was passionate about Jesus and reaching the lost. He was a radical figure who inspired a generation in powerful ways. But I believe that in his youthful zeal (he was only 28 when he died and had been a Christian for about seven years) he sometimes went too far.
My family owned a video of one of his concerts, which we watched often and even subjected our guests to. About halfway through the concert, Keith quoted from the Great Commission.
Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).
Keith continued by saying that being a banker or lawyer for Jesus wasn’t enough. “If you are not called to stay [in America], you are called to go,” he said. “You don’t need a call—you are already called. Unless you have received a definite call to stay, then you are called to go!” I can’t convey on paper how convincing he was—listening to it again yesterday, I felt guilty for only being a pastor!
Keith’s appeal inspired many men and women to become missionaries, but it also made many feel guilty. At the age of 15, I was being told that if I didn’t become a missionary, I was rebelling against Jesus. I could support missionaries, pray for the lost, and serve Jesus in my community, but I’d still fall short. The problem was that I really didn’t want to be a missionary (or a pastor, for that matter). Whenever I talked to God in my quiet times, I was careful not to listen too closely because I was afraid he would tell me to be a missionary. About five years later I realized that I might actually want to be a pastor, so I headed off to Bible college.
A High Calling
At Bible college, the emphasis on being in vocational ministry continued. I can’t count the number of times I heard that being in full-time ministry was a high calling. The professors and chapel speakers frequently reminded us just how few students would enter full-time ministry and that even fewer would survive their first five years. I know they meant well—they were trying to inspire us and prepare us for the trials ahead. But their warnings included a subtle challenge: “Will you be one of the few to make it?” The problem with telling a bunch of young, self-confident students that the ministry is a noble profession is that they start to believe it’s the only noble profession. The challenge reinforced the fallacy of a two-tiered Christianity.
What spoke the loudest wasn’t what was said, but what wasn’t said. I don’t ever remember a chapel speaker saying, “Seventy-five percent of you won’t graduate from here—and that’s great! We’re excited for whatever God has for you. Take everything you learn here and use it wherever you go. God knows this world could use more biblically trained business leaders, interior designers, and computer programmers.” (Thankfully, this has changed. My alma mater now speaks with pride about its bivocational alumni and offers programs for students who plan work outside of the church.)
I wonder how many of my classmates still feel as if they failed God because they didn’t remain in vocational ministry. I talked to one Bible-college dropout who told me this supposed failure was a factor in his broken marriage. It wasn’t the only factor to be sure, but his ex-wife made it clear that she wanted to be married to a pastor, not a used-car salesman. Likewise, I wonder how many former missionaries and pastors struggle to find meaning and God’s approval in their post-ministry lives.
I’ve also talked to many Christians who believe they’re second-class Christians because they’re not in vocational ministry. They live under the burden of believing that God would have been a little happier if they had sold everything and become missionaries.
Almost as Good
For the past 20 years, I’d been afraid that Keith Green was at least partially right. In light of eternity, what business do any of us have doing anything other than preaching the gospel? On the surface, that sentiment seemed so biblical, and I had never heard a pastor refute it. The basic response was more pragmatic. If everybody went on the mission field, who would support the missionaries? God’s plan for supporting missions seemed to be based on the majority of us being disobedient.
“But that’s okay,” the church seemed to say. “We don’t want you to feel too bad—you can make up for it by going to church, paying your tithe, supporting our missionaries, teaching Sunday school, and being a good witness at work. Winning coworkers to Jesus is almost as good as being a missionary.” These things were consolation prizes for not being in vocational ministry. But what if you hate teaching Sunday school? What if you work all by yourself, and the only one you could witness to is the squirrel watching you dig a ditch? Of course, no one would actually say any of that, but the problem was what Christian leaders didn’t say. I heard lots of sermons about supporting missions and being a good witness at work, but I don’t remember many sermons about honoring God through hard work.
But I was set free that evening in Starbucks. I realized my job had meaning—and not only because I was fulfilling the Great Commission by witnessing or tithing. It had meaning because it was fulfilling another commission that preceded the other by several millennia. Before I explain that, I need to tell you about the deep thought I had been thinking as I swept the floor that night.
The Bible Jesus Read
I would be exaggerating if I said Christians never read the Old Testament, but not by much. We know the Sunday school stories, the Ten Commandments, parts of Psalms and Proverbs, and a smattering of the messianic prophecies. But many Christians treat the Old Testament the way they do the preface in other books—they know it might be important, but they skip it anyway.
The authors of the New Testament didn’t see it that way. What we call the Old Testament, they called the Bible. They quoted the Old Testament continually, viewed it as authoritative, and lived their lives by its precepts. Far from treating the Old Testament as the preface to the Bible, they saw it as the core. They wrote Gospels and history and letters and such to explain the staggering ramification of Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. They didn’t write to replace the Old Testament, but to supplement it.
Here’s why this is so important. The authors of the New Testament had no intention of replacing the Old Testament, so they could be selective about what they wrote. They didn’t need to cover every single topic, because they expected their readers to know the Old Testament. For example, the New Testament doesn’t talk a lot about worship because we have Psalms to teach us how to worship God.
Here’s another example. The New Testament doesn’t say much about sex beyond “don’t do it outside of marriage.”1 If all we had was the New Testament, we might think God had a low view of sex. If you want to see just how pro-sex the Bible really is, read Proverbs and the Song of Solomon—an entire book dedicated to unabashed sexual enjoyment.
The more I study the Bible, the more I realize that the apostles expected their readers to continue receiving instruction from the Old Testament. When we don’t read the Old Testament enough, we get an incomplete picture of what God is telling us. Much of what I call obsessive Christianity is the result of reading only the New Testament at the expense of the Old. That’s kind of funny when you think about it. Like most Christians, I used to associate the Old Testament with wrath and rules and no fun. In reality, the Old Testament is packed with parties and feasts and lots of fun.
The First Great Commission
As I was thinking about how the Old and New Testaments work together to give us the whole picture of the Christian life, I suddenly realized something I had never seen before. The Great Commission at the end of Matthew was not the first Great Commission. Jesus gave it to us assuming that we would keep following the first one, which is found at the very beginning of the Bible.
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:26-28).
The first Great Commission, God’s very first command to humanity, was to work in the garden, take care of it, and rule over the earth. We were made in his image, which means (among other things) that we are to be his representatives to the entire earth. “Fill the earth and subdue it” doesn’t mean “trash it as quick as you possibly can,” but “take good care of it on God’s behalf.” God told Adam not only to rule but also to work. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15).
Before sin entered the world, God’s plan for his children was that they work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Work—hard, sweaty, and down-in-the-dirt work—was a big part of his original plan for us.
Adam’s sin and the events of Genesis 3 didn’t negate the first Great Commission, but only necessitated the addition of the second Great Commission of Matthew 28. A God-honoring, radically normal life isn’t obsessed with the second Great Commission to the exclusion of the first one. Nor does it complacently acknowledge the first while ignoring the second.
Keith Green was speaking biblically when he said Jesus commands us all to go, but he wasn’t speaking biblically enough. He overlooked the first Great Commission as well as the practice of the early church. Paul never told his readers to quit their jobs and go onto the mission field. Rather, he told the majority of them to stay put.
That evening in the Starbucks lobby, I finally understood that our hard work honors God. Giving a tithe of our earnings or preaching to coworkers doesn’t make it holier. Just by making the four-dollar lattes with excellence and sweeping the floor the best I could, I was honoring God. I was fulfilling the first Great Commission.
Think how radically this could change your view of work—when you swing a hammer, teach kids, network computers, or drive a bus, you are fulfilling the first Great Commission. Unless you are convinced that God has called you into vocational ministry, stop worrying about it. You can just focus on working hard and glorifying God in whatever job you may find yourself. (Well, maybe not whatever job—I seriously doubt you could be a pimp to the glory of God.)2
So God doesn’t expect us all to become missionaries. Does that mean that we should be content with mediocre lives and never strive to great things in the kingdom of God? No, mediocrity is the last thing God wants for you or me. God wants us to be great. He wants your corner of the world to be different because you are there. The thing is, we tend to have a distorted view of greatness. Let’s talk about that next.